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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask will my children ever know how loved they are?

136 replies

thewinehasgonetomyhead · 03/10/2018 19:53

Bit of a soppy one I’m afraid. Dd1 is three, dd2 is 5 months. I’m lucky enough to be a SAHM and I love it so much. I wonder if my girls will ever remember these days we share together and if they’ll really know how loved they truly are?

How do you ensure your ankle biters feel the love?

OP posts:
ShatnersWig · 04/10/2018 08:18

I can honestly say that as a 44-year old man, I knew my nan loved me enormously. My parents, especially my dad, not so much. As a result, my parents are more like the neighbours you quite like down the road you see from time to time. We get on, but we're not close. I was devastated when my nan died two years ago. I don't think I will feel anything remotely close to that when my parents die. I will feel alone, as I have no other close relatives, but that's about it.

I'm sure my parents did and do love me. They just never show it.

ferntwist · 04/10/2018 08:23

Shatners that’s really sad. Can you remember the things your nan did to make you feel so loved?

ShatnersWig · 04/10/2018 08:35

Absolutely. I can remember my parents buying me board games for birthdays and Christmas and never playing them with me. I took them round to my nan and grandad to play with. I can remember my parents buying me a springy net in a frame (the idea being you kicked a football against it and it would bounce back). I had no interest in football but of course it meant I could amuse myself without them having to participate.

Bizarrely, a decade ago, when my mum stopped working, she started babysitting for a family friend who was a single mum. The child now has its own bedroom at their house. Calls them Nan and Grandad even though he has grandparents. There is a giant trampoline in their garden they bought for him. He's gone on holiday with them. We never went on holiday until I was 13 because they wouldn't put our dog (whom I loved, don't get me wrong) into kennels. I only ever went on holiday three times with my parents.

There are loads and loads of photos of this child in their house. Everywhere. There are three of me. Some years ago as part of Xmas I gave my parents a nice photo frame that could be hung portrait or landscape and I said once they knew where and in which direction they'd put it I'd give them three photos of me to go in it. It's still unused. I was sat next to nan when it was unwrapped and she leaned over to me and said "I know why you did that. Very different from when you were little isn't it?" Bloody brilliant my nan. And my grandad. He died year after nan.

ree348 · 04/10/2018 08:37

I think as an adult I only realised how much my parents loved me was when I went through a hard point in my life and of course when I had children myself!

Other than that you seem to be doing all the right things to show that you love them on a daily basis.

lovetherisingsun · 04/10/2018 08:38

Oh, Shatners :( My dad never once told me he loved me, he would regularly get drunk and as a 6 year old would bring me down at night to stand in front of him whilst he told me everything that was wrong with me and how "much you're like your mother" I was. Even when he knew he was dying when I 18 he still couldn't bring himself to say he loved me. I think he liked me in his own way eventually. His mother, however, though she also never said it, she would shower me with tea and biscuits and walks and gentle, warm memories of just loving being with me, despite never actaully saying she loved me. I miss her more than my dad. It's good though you had your nan in your life, as sad as it is about your parents Flowers

ShatnersWig · 04/10/2018 08:45

@love No, my dad's never told me that either. Mum has. My parents will tell everyone I was a brilliant child and teenager, no trouble whatsoever (which is true). I was certainly taught self-reliance! The only unpleasant experience was when I was suffering severe depression when I was 17 and was on anti-depressants. Apparently I found out later they'd hidden all the pills and things as they thought I might to do something stupid (never once crossed my mind). They knew I was coming out of it when they heard me laugh at a TV programme for the first time in eight months. But before that I remember my dad coming to my bedroom and shouting at me to pull myself together and didn't I realise how I was affecting my mum with my illness.

SilverApples · 04/10/2018 09:18

As others have said, it’s when they are young adults and life kicks them in the teeth that they rely on the rock that is your love for them to help them get through the tough times. Then they understand how much you love them, and what it has meant to them over the years.
As small children, those that are loved just take it for granted that the whole world works like that and are surprised and sometimes shocked when it doesn’t.
Let them know that it’s not one way, more like a web that links families and friends.

LisaSimpsonsbff · 04/10/2018 12:06

Like many other people it was only having my own DS a couple of months ago that made me really realise how my parents love me - I apologised to them when they came to see him for all the times I said I'd call to let them know I'd got home safely and then forgotten because I'd suddenly realised the way they must have felt when they didn't know I was ok! - but it was at university when I suddenly realised that the common factor among all my friends who went out with horrible man after horrible man was that they had bad relationships with their own parents and I suddenly thought 'oh, it's because I've always been really loved, that's why I sort of expect to be treated well'. I think before then I'd taken it for granted that I had parents who loved and cared for me conditionally. I remember around the same time being completely shocked when a friend said her dad only ever saw her when he wanted to borrow money off her (she was still a student!) because it was so outside my experience of what parents do.

Twillow · 04/10/2018 12:23

Start a book writing down the funny things they say and do - my children are grown up and still love reading it.

Hoardernomore · 04/10/2018 12:31

Think mine will just remember me exhausted and fed up and on my phone a lot in an attempt to escape the sheer drudgery and boredom ignored being a parent.

Hoardernomore · 04/10/2018 12:31

involved in not ignored. Although they do ignore me a lot of the time too.

BretonStripe · 04/10/2018 16:10

Loved this:

*Every cuddle, every kiss, every dinner you make them, every story you read them is creating millions of neural pathways in their brain every single day.

They may not recall every detail but you're very literally imbibing them with love.*

Should be made into a meme 😊

Lovely thread (apart from the tiresome SAHM/WOHM bickering and people trying to cause an argument when there isn't one).

CesiraAndEnrico · 04/10/2018 16:20

Mine doesn't, he's 18 and apparently has a memory of a sieve when it comes to the early years. Apart from the time I lost his beloved Po doll.

That he remembers clear as a bell. Grin

But he knows how much he's been loved all his life, because he knows he is so loved now and can't remember anything different.

SleepingStandingUp · 04/10/2018 16:27

Lots of Mom's take pics of the kids, the ids with Dad, the kids with Nanny but never themselves because they look too fat, too tired, too messy too busy documenting everything from outside.

DS won't remember all the fun we have now but I make sure he will always have photos to look back on and see how much we loved from the first moment

haverhill · 04/10/2018 16:29

My parents were undemonstrative, stoical types (a war baby and a pre-war baby) but I aways felt loved because of what they did rather than said.
They are both still alive and I still feel deeply loved by both of them, despite them being frail/disabled and very needy.
I remember ten years ago my mum telling me that she had cried after I told her about something that made me cry. I was really surprised and touched that she was so moved by my (very temporary) misery.

Saltedcaramelcake · 04/10/2018 16:32

I had a very loving warm upbringing, lots of hugs and kisses and we always said I love you a lot but I think I only really realised how much my own parent's love me when I had my own children. I got it then, so going by that, my own children will realise in approximately 30 years time how much. I tell my children all the time that I love them (I have a 2 year old and 1 year old) and I kiss and hug them. Last week my 2 year old said "I love you mummy" without me saying it first, I had a little tear I have to admit!

golondrina · 04/10/2018 16:35

I don't know. I had a difficult childhood with a mother who was very overpowering, engulfing and demanding. So, you were loved when doing what she wanted, but the threat of having love withdrawn as a punishment was very real.
I do my very best with mine, I try to be fair and kind and I tell them I love them and am physically affectionate, but it's hard knowing if I'm doing it "right" when my example was so toxic and dysfunctional.

SleepingStandingUp · 04/10/2018 16:37

That's really sad hoarder

LittleLionMansMummy · 04/10/2018 16:46

I always say to 7yo ds "I love you more than you'll ever know, do you know that?" To my almost 2yo dd I say "you're so deliciously squidgy I could eat you with a spoon" and then squeeze her and shower her with kisses. I say they make my heart sing, because that's the only way I know to explain how much light, and joy they bring to our lives.

To answer your question: yes, one day they probably will know. If/ when they become parents themselves, and only then.

darkriver198868 · 04/10/2018 16:55

I hope my girls know I love them so much. I loved them so much I recognised I wasn't able to look after them like they deserved. I might never see them again but, I will never stop loving them.

SleepingStandingUp · 04/10/2018 17:03

I swear my 3 yo just said randomly

"Uh Oo a a"

I said pardon and he repeated.

I said "you love me?"

He said "eh"

Awww, I'm gonna go pop with happiness 😍

SleepingStandingUp · 04/10/2018 17:05

Oh darkriver I'm so sorry, I just saw your post. I didn't mean mine to sound like a gloat or goady post after yours.

I'm so sorry you had to make that call but yes, it must take immense love to do that

darkriver198868 · 04/10/2018 17:07

@sleepingstandingup don't worry didn't see it as goady xx

SleepingStandingUp · 04/10/2018 17:13

Just crap timing x

anonmum22 · 04/10/2018 17:18

OP - I haven't read this whole thread but I feel exactly the same!! I have started a diary where I try and write each month what they have been up to and how much I love them and special memories etc in the hope that when they are older they will be able to look back and read how much they mean to me xxx

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